This is about your work. I was really hoping you were going to tell me, because that's where that sfelt like this was leading up was like a grand theory of how these things are united. But maybe i can say, i can kind of point to a couple of themes that i think speak across. May be the kind of more episthemological parts of my work, in more feminoust parts than you can tell me if any of this rings any bells. So for example, and we take te criminalization of sex work, right? So you i'm in favour of decriminalizing it, but i think there is an interesting question about whether the hoped-for effect
What is our right to be desired? How are our sexual desires shaped by the society around us? Is consent sufficient for a sexual relationship? In the wake of the #MeToo movement, public debates about sex work, and the rise in popularity of “incel culture”, philosopher Amia Srinivasan explores these questions and more in her new book of essays, The Right to Sex: Feminism in the Twenty-First Century. Amia’s interests lay in how our internal perspectives and desires are shaped by external forces, and the question of how we might alter those forces to achieve a more just, equitable society.
Amia joined Tyler to discuss the importance of context in her vision of feminism, what social conservatives are right about, why she’s skeptical about extrapolating from the experience of women in Nordic countries, the feminist critique of the role of consent in sex, whether disabled individuals should be given sex vouchers, how to address falling fertility rates, what women learned about egalitarianism during the pandemic, why progress requires regress, her thoughts on Susan Sontag, the stroke of fate that stopped her from pursuing a law degree, the “profound dialectic” in Walt Whitman’s poetry, how Hinduism has shaped her metaphysics, how Bernard Williams and Derek Parfit influenced her, the anarchic strain in her philosophy, why she calls herself a socialist, her next book on genealogy, and more.
Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links.
Recorded September 8th, 2021 Other ways to connect
Thumbnail photo credit: Nina Subin